


It's Just Code

by maven



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-11
Updated: 2014-05-11
Packaged: 2018-01-21 12:47:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1551029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maven/pseuds/maven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Felix leaves Delphine and Cosima work and chat... only some of it makes it onscreen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Just Code

**Author's Note:**

> Some conversation between Delphine and Cosima after Felix left and before the season started… likely to be Jossed when Season Two starts. C'est la vie. French from actual labels and car licence plates.

"What were you going to say?"

Delphine looked up from behind the couch where she was plugging her laptop in. "What?"

"When you arrived. I asked 'why are you even here' and you started to say something."

"I said Leekie is a liar."

"Before that."

"Ah. Yes."

"Delphine," Cosima said as the silence continued.

"I cannot answer that," Delphine said, collapsing onto the couch and focused on her laptop screen.

"Because?

"Because you do not trust me," Delphine said. "Oh, with this, yes," she said gesturing to the two laptops, "but not with this," she continued, gesturing to the space between them on the couch. "Especially this," she added, placing her hand over her heart. "Especially that."

Cosimia nodded slowly. "I guess not."

"There are many things I cannot say or do right now. If I can show you and prove it, if you can see it and... and... manipulate it then you can trust it. Science; yes. Emotions and trust; no."

Cosima nodded, remembering how she had instinctively shrugged off Delphine's casual touch.

"Okay, personally and emotionally I'm not sure how I feel about things but I'm glad you're here to help figure this out."

"We..." Delphine said, then abruptly sat down, opening up her laptop.

"Was that a French yes or did you just stop at the start of a sentence?"

"I was going to say we make a good team."

"Yeah, we were."

+++++

"Do you think..."

"What?"

"Do you wonder if we met differently? I mean, not as like, I dunno, Goodall and a chimp."

Delphine paused in her typing, glancing at Cosima. Who was studying the screen of her own laptop with ferocious intent.

"No. Should I?"

Cosima's lips quirked slightly. "It isn't a requirement. Just wondering."

"Well, it would have to have been in America," Delphine said after several minutes.

"Why?"

"I speak English. You do not speak French."

"Really faulty reasoning. First, if I'm in France in this scenario then clearly I learned French. Second, it assumes I don't speak French now."

"Which," Delphine asked.

"What?"

"You speak French. Or you could learn it," Delphine said, her brow furrowed at the display on her screen. "

"Well, I could learn it. It's just, like, code. Wee equals yes. And I know French. Some."

"You know French?"

"Sure, um… _Tenir ce produit et tout autre médicament hors de la porteé des enfants_."

"Years of legislation and millions of euros to protect the French language and you kill it with one blow."

"It wasn't that bad."

"No, no… actually it was atrocious. Where did you learn that?"

"Felix's bathroom. On a bottle of nightqyl… cough medicine. I've, ah, been spending some time there. Coughing. "

"Ah. Any other examples?" Delphine asked, her tone playful as the mood grew pensive.

"You'll like this one, _fait d'ingrédients naturels_."

"I like because it is healthy?"

"No, it was on a bottle of French's. It's mustard, but not French mustard."

"I will never understand this language," Delphine muttered.

" _Bein agiter_ ," Cosima continued. "That was on the ketchup. I think they have some law up here about the labels. I figure if I read them all I'll have a really extensive yet limited knowledge of the French language."

"So, you know no French other than these labels?"

"Oh! Yeah, _voulez vous coucher avec moi, ce soir_?"

"I do not think that was on the ketchup bottle."

"Lyrics for Lady Marmalade. Did I just proposition you?"

"Perhaps. The accent... it is not so clear. I am relieved that you did not think 'gitchi gitchi ya ya da da' was French."

+++++ 

"We keep looking for decryption algorithms and the NSA will get flagged."

"This is bad?"

"Bunch of feds and Mounties breaking down the door? Could be bad," Cosima said. "NSA. National Security Assholes. Superspies. Bug the phones and email. "

"You are serious?"

"I am semi-serious but likely just paranoid," Cosima said, scrubbing her eyes briefly before adjusting first her glasses and and then the current algorithm. "I've been paranoid since I met Beth and Allison and what's happened since has just cranked it up to eleven. Trying to deal with the thought of, you know, spies. At least Sarah knows who her handler is. Or, really, Beth's handler. And I know my handler; you. Now. Allison's…"

"You keep saying handlers. Is it one handler, two handler?

"No, one handler, two handlers.

"Then why do you call me the handler? As if there were just me and now that you have found me you stop looking? Stop watching?"

"Oh, my god," Cosima said, slowly leaning back and shaking her head.

"They would want to monitor you as much as possible, not just when you are at school. At work, at leisure, would they not?"

"Oh. My. God. I am so stupid," Cosima said, moaning and closing her eyes. "I've been so focused on the now. But they've known who I was, were I was. Where Beth and Allison and the Europeans where. Everyone but Sarah and Helena. Teachers, coaches, doctors... fuck, parents."

"Some might not know why, Cosima. IVF was less than a decade old. Asking the parents or doctor to keep records and submit reports. To not tell you or your parents so that you would not feel awkward. Please breath calm or you will start coughing again."

"Yeah. Trying. There could be more, right, than just the ten of us I know about? And that's just what we know about. There could be more in Europe or, I don't know, Australia or New Zealand. We'd blend in there. Different cultures, different educational systems, different societal norms. Explore the whole nature versus nurture. Nature is fixed so variety would be nurture. Of course, they'd need a control version, maybe a couple. Like Proclone, raised more in the know, not in ignorance."

"Excuse. I..."

"Delphine?" Cosima asked a few moments later, wishing there was a way to knock on a bead curtain and finally just walking in. "Hey, you okay? Then come back to the couch. Much softer seat," she said, holding out her hand to Delphine and pulling her up from the where she sat on the floor. "You okay, seriously, you look all pale. Paler."

"Sorry. I do not… I am a very good researcher. I study diseases and not people. Immunology is detached. But just now..."

"It became people."

"It became you."

"And who am I? 'And so Javert, you see it's true.' Sorry, Allison had Les Mis playing… never mind. Bad analogy," Cosima said, pausing and closing her eyes briefly before looking back at Delphine. "Usually I try to think of us, of me, what we are, as an abstract experiment. Subject A and Subject B and Subject C. A scientific thing because then I can deal with it but every now and then -boom- its Allison and Beth and Cosima and now Sarah, you know, people. Knocks me in the gut too."

"You are not 324b21. That is not who you are."

"It is my nature."

"While your nature, where you come from, is fascinating intellectually it is not what brought me here. Nature is your past."

"And you're here for the me in the now?"

"Not exactly. The future as well."

+++++

"Back to the 'would we be friends under different circumstances' question..."

"I think this is something I cannot say."

"Sure, answer it. I'll just, you know, store it and process it later. Decide if you're telling the truth or just saying what I want to hear."

Delphine lowered the screen. "I think, then, that we would be friends. If you had come one day to work at Dyad or if I came to America to study more. And, had we met, we would be friends. But I do not think we would become lovers. And..."

"And?" Cosima prompted after a few moments of silence, her hand over Delphine to prevent the laptop screen from being raised.

"Your algorithm will have to be very complicated. Am I lying because it is something you want to hear? Is it the truth only if it hurts you when I say it? Am I being manipulative... to tell you a falsehood that you would believe by wounding you?"

"And?"

"And it would be easy to say that to be your friend would be enough. Because it sounds like a true thing. Because it hurts a little so it must be true so we can be friends and you can trust me again with that. But it isn't a true thing because yes, being your friend would be good but it would not be all. And that you cannot believe because maybe it is what you want to hear and so I say it."

"You... you probably lost me somewhere in that."

Delphine threw up her hair and muttered a spate of fast and violent French.

"And I'm pretty sure that wasn't on the ketchup bottle."

Delphine sighed, a smile ghosting across her features before it faded. "I was brought to America to meet you. I was ordered to try to befriend you. To interest you in Dyad. The Neolutions. Leechie. And when you," she said, shaking her head and closing her eyes, "I was encouraged to..."

"Hey," Cosima said, gently punching her shoulder, trying to bring Delphine's attention back from wherever it had strayed. "It's okay."

"No, it is not okay. If this were a movie or a book you would throw it across the room. How could the writer be so stupid? So cliché. How could you believe this unbelievable thing? I sleep with you and fall in love. Like some dumb American movie."

"I do have mad skills."

"Non."

"Ouch. Upon reflection small, white lies about me are allowed."

"I cannot explain what happened because I do not understand what happened. All I know is the person, the people who should... that I should be loyal to and who should be loyal to me? They asked me to do some terrible thing. And the person who has no reason to love, to like, to trust me? Who I wounded so badly she could only lash back and run away? Here I sit and she keeps looking for reasons to believe in me. To let me back in. And do not say it is just mad science you want to make with me."

"Is that what the cool kids are calling it?" Cosima said, sighing slightly when Delphine didn't respond to the humour. "Pretty feeble joke so... listen, we were friends first. We can be friends again, right? Just like you said if I went to France to study at Decartes and we met... we'd be friends."

Delphine was silent. 

"Or, you know, if Decartes is no good for this pretend thing then the Curie University."

"Felix has a ketchup bottle listing French universities?"

"No, Greyhound is wireless," Cosima said, smiling at Delphine's confused look. "Greyhound is the name of the bus company. Their buses have Wi-Fi. And I just spent nearly 24 hours in buses and bus stations ummm…"

"Cyberstalking me? That is the term?"

"Not the one used by the stalker, usually, but yeah."

"I am the stalkee, so I may use it."

"Agreed."

"By plane it is only 2 hours but there is no Wi-Fi and a bad meal and," she said, frowning at Cosima's expression, "when was the last time you ate?"

"Well, I had breakfast, had a phone call from Sarah, sort of got distracted. There were chips from a machine in Chicago… or maybe it was Detroit…"

"Oh Cosima. Does Felix have any soup? They would be in the tin cans that say something like _soupe condense_ or maybe _verser la soupe dans une casserole_."

"Yeah, past the sell date but they're not bulging so should be good. For some reason they're in alphabetical order by flavour which does not seem like Felix at all. You never know about people, I guess."

+++++

"To build my data base for comparison."

"Yes?"

"Tell me a lie you told me. Back when you were still Delphine Beraud."

"You asked, are you okay, are you sure, remember?"

"I remember."

"I lied. The tears, they were because I was going to ask for the ice cream."

"Okay."

"I told you a great many lies. But only about things. Never about emotions. About our friendship. I cannot ask you to believe me..."

"I lied. Or rather, I misled. I implied…" Cosima paused taking a deep breath, hesitating. "I said I could tell that you hadn't, you know…"

" _Je me souviens_ ," Delphine whispered before repeating it. "I remember."

"You weren't, you know, bad at it or anything."

"Merci? Thank you, I think?"

"God, I'm saying this badly."

"Non, you are saying it like Cosima."

"Is this fixable?"

"Only if we try."

Cosima nodded. "Then let's solve this sucker and start dealing with the rest after."

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, especially sections 2.1.2, 2.2.2 and 2.4.1.


End file.
